Welcome Comrades to the 103rd edition of the Dispatch Swifte here, and I must say I'm very happy to be bringing you another fine edition of the only Conquer Club Newsletter out there! We know you have no choice when it comes to where to get your CC news, and so we will just have to keep providing it!

With the pace of change around Conquer Club since the new administration began, there is much to talk about yet again! Here's a look at all the late-breaking news:

The return of SOS Africa! I won't go in to all the details on this one, since saf has taken the time to summarize all the events in his article in the Mess Hall... however I will make a shameless plug for the SOS Africa Live Chat Safari Event! Be sure to stop in and join the fun on September 20th, and compete for General Achievement medals!

Another awesome set of updates came out on September 5th, which included:

We will now start recording scores for players at the start and end of a game. This is a partial implemention of Archiving Ranks! Hopefully, this will allow for future updates involving scores, and perhaps more Add-Ons and tools for any developers who are interested in using this feature.

Multiple Game Creation: This is currently limited to 5 at a time, but upon further field testing, we may be willing to expand it!

And what fun would updates be without a few hiccups? Here is a quick run-down of the demonstration of Murphy's Law we had here on September 11th, and how the admins are handling the problems:

Some Team Games did not finish properly when all opposing teams are eliminated - If you are in a game that this occurred in, please send in an eTicket with the game number. I will get the game finished and the points allocated properly.

Some Team Games finished before all opposing teams were eliminated - We are currently working on re-opening those games for play (and reversing the erroneous point transactions).

An update to the XML caused all games on the Conquer 500 map to be corrupted - All active games on this map have been reset. If a game was ongoing when this issue occurred and has since ended, please submit an eTicket with the game number so we can correct it.

Last but not least, Qwert has resigned his role as the organizer of the Clan League 5 event, and Keefie has taken his place. More on this in the Platoon Report.

Here's what we have on tap for you this issue:

The first regular section is Mess Hall, which has a neat feature on turns in a game by StubbsKVM and the Dispatch's own Dukasaur as well as the Scum Insider and a look at all the events going on with SOS Africa. The planned interview of Qwert will be published in a future edition.

The Platoon Report covers all aspects of the Clan scene, including an exclusive look at the entries in the Clan Icon contest.

War Games reaches a milestone in the Meet the Tournament... interview series, and is offering a contest with multiple General Achievement Medals available, in addition to their great regular features on the Tournament world.

Cartographic Surveillance includes a report on the current maps in development, and a close look at the Phantasia Altitudinis map.

Finally, our Next Mission Brief includes such things as the closing credits and information on how to subscribe.

Turn 1:StubbsKVM=BlueDukasaur and I only decided to do this article after turn 1 was finished. So this is a screenshot from the beginning of my turn 2. I think you'll get the picture.

My thoughts on turn 1:I don't like my position at all. None of my territories connect and it will be a pain trying to get them connected while building my stacks. I also have no territory in Africa. I think green has the best position, having a lot of connected territories, so he'll have no problem building up. I am considering going for South America, so I have some extra troops to deploy. I suggest this to the staff, who refer me to the SoC Four Moves topic. Right. No taking any territories on turn 1. I thought this would be a good exception, but I guess not. Instead, I deploy 1 on Edmonton, Stockholm and Beijing before ending the turn with no attacks made.

My thoughts on Turn 2:I'm in luck. Green has abandoned Chicago and I can merge my troops. I'm deploying 1 on Sydney and 2 on Edmonton. I'll attack Chicago and merge my troops from Havana towards Chicago. Success! I've managed to take Chicago without losing any troops. However, I was dumb enough to forget to move my Havana troops to Chicago as well. I'm such an idiot.

I'm an SoC graduate, and I still play a very SoC style. I did not try to take a card round 1, but I will this time.

I am also the only graduate. Elric is an instructor. The other four players are all current SoC students. As the only graduate, I feel under pressure to show up these noob acolytes! I know the odds are against me though. Besides the fact that it's a six-player game and one's expected win rate is only 18%, there is the fact that all these students are able to get advice from their teachers. Oh yes, this will be a good game to win, but I'm not very confident.

Gendotte is in the coveted position of having started on Chicago and having had 2 other adjacent cities to fort from. He has a massive 10-stack. The other highly-coveted starting points are Berlin (held by Major Bob) and Nairobi and Hong Kong (both held by koffiedwerq). My best starting point is Moscow. It's ranked as a very good spot by some, but I've never had much luck with it. Definitely I will be on the lookout for a chance to move to Berlin if the cards and dice are favourable.

The only card spots available to me are London and Montreal, both available from Reykjavik. I also have to build on Moscow, so I will drop 1 on Moscow, 2 on Reykjavik, and soft-attack London for a card. I will try London rather than Montreal, because I don't want to swap cards with gendotte. His starting point is way too powerful and I'd like to see him having difficulty getting a card. Almost surely he will get a card anyway, but if by some miracle he doesn't, it will be helpful.

I succeeded in getting a card. It would have been nice if I got it on my first shot, but I got it on my second. The basic SoC doctrine of "soft attack" is a useful one. In the early stages of the game, never end your turn with fewer troops on a city than you had at the beginning of your turn. Two attacks versus a 1, and if you fail on the second then stop.

Want to get into the Mafia scene, but don't know how to play or even what it is? Consult these threads: Mafia Information, Mafia and You, and Rules and Terms of Mafia.Too much work? Too lazy to read through everything? No worries, you can always jump right into a game and ask for other players or the game runner to help guide you.

What is "Mafia"?Mafia, for those of you that don't know, is a game that generally takes place in a town, where the townspeople have to determine who the mafia (or "scum") is and lynch them via a majority vote during the day and the mafia try to kill everyone at night and bluff their way out of getting killed by the town.

Mafia NewsFircoal has returned from a long hiatus to host A Cino Filled Mafia which has a bunch of old veterans. Take a look at all the in jokes and personalities we have.

Mafia CalloutsCalling all players interested! Some mafia games need some filling:

Advanced Roles and Strategy by safariguy5We discuss a special type of protective role.

The Seraph Knight

What is It?The Seraph Night can protect only one person a game. Once the target has been chosen, that target is immune to all kills until the Seraph Knight dies.

ExampleJack protects Alice on Night 2. Alice cannot be nightkilled or lynched until Jack is lynched or nightkilled.

How to Play this RoleThe Seraph Knight is usually Town but Mafia versions may exist in games with multiple mafia factions or other anti-town killing roles. As a town role, it is best to protect a confirmed townie as soon as possible. Holding out for a power role may lead to the target or the knight dying prematurely or accidentally protecting a fakeclaiming scum.

About 2 years ago, Andy announced a partnership with SOS Africa which happened to be represented a CC member named Tactician. With the endorsement of SOS Africa as the official charity, this marked the first instance of CC branching out into serious community relations. SOS Africa sponsors African children to go to school and pave the way for a brighter future and better education.

The highlight of the last event was the creation of the Africa II map. This year, the event is being expanded to several more activities. The full announcement can be found here.

First, there is a large tournament with 5 years of premium membership as a prize. You can enter the tournament in several ways.

First, you can donate to the CC sponsored justgiving page for SOS Africa.

Second, you can win one of the qualification tournaments. They will be released in sets of 4, you may only join 1 tournament per set. The prize for winning a qualification tournament is 3 months premium, a tournament medal, and entry into the grand tournament.

Third, you can join our Live Chat event. On September 20th, you must race against other users to find pictures of 5 African Safari animals hidden somewhere in the forum. A difficult to find sixth one may also be lurking somewhere. Winning one of the 3 LC events guarantees your spot in the large tournament.

Finally, there will be a forum contest. Submit a photojournal to JaneAustin with original captions. Entries must be received by September 22nd and must be at least 5 images long. A judging panel of mods and community members will decide a winner and they will receive entry into the tournament.

Please take the time to visit the web page of SOS Africa and learn more about this fantastic charity.

Welcome to another issue of the Platoon Report, where we're keeping you up to date on everything going on in the CC Clan world.

First up I have a friendly reminder that the Clan Directors are looking for a few more dedicated volunteers to join their team, and applications are still being accepted. For more details, see this post. Follow the instructions and get your applications in as soon as possible.

This issue, clan freelance reporter trinicardinal goes to great lengths to bring us a report live from battlefield of the 3rd 1v1 Clan Challenge. We thank him for his dedication and wish him a safe return!

As has been announced, Qwert has resigned his post as organizer of the Clan League 5 event, and Keefie has taken the reigns. Many thanks to Qwert for his dedication in running such a massive event as CL5, as well as regularly reporting here on the event. Due to the transition, we don't have a full article this time around, but we do have the updated League Tables for you. Stay tuned to next issue for a more thorough report! Another of our regular reporters, IcePack, is taking a well-deserved rest from reporting this week, so we'll get a full update on CC4 next issue as well.

We do have one last piece of news! Early in September the Clan Directors announced a contest for a new design to clan icons, which are expected to be integrated into the site in more ways thanks to efforts of the new site administration. The entries are in, and a vote has been put to the members of the Clan Directors & Friends group. Our last article below reveals the four options on which the clan representatives will be voting.

Once again I decided to wander into the middle of the battlefields to see what the dust filled air holds for the 3rd edition of the Annual 1v1 Clan Challenge.

In the middle of this example of the air pollution I notice that the first round is complete and so are those matchups of the second round that did not depend on a first round result. My clandestine forays into the different battle grounds have divulged the following reports...

FISO and ATN battled hard with neither side gaining a clear advantage throughout the matchup and in the end it settled on the narrowest of margins with ATN moving forward having won 21 games to FISO’s 20. They now face clan giants and #1 seed KORT in the 2nd Round and are going to need a lot of coffee if they are to bring KORT’s day to an end and move on. The winner of this Round 2 matchup will face TNC who secured their place in Round 3 by sinking ATL 26-15. This matchup was made even more interesting by a friendly wager over the result and the highly charged atmosphere resulted in a few people being foed and a change of sig is at hand for an ATL player.

LEG had a clear triumph over KNT and will now face ACE in Round 2. Even though ACE is seeded in the #4 position for this tournament LEG must be feeling confident given that they won 31 of their matches against KNT while only relinquishing 10. That particular Round 2 matchup will decide the clan to face MD who is patiently waiting in their Round 3 spot after taking advantage of some faltering steps by OSA to advance 22-19.

In yet another close matchup VVV narrowly triumphed over SoH with the other 21-20 result of the competition so far. They now have to face second seeded FALL and will have to be on the top of their game to move on to Round 3. I would expect that FALL would fancy their chances of moving on to have a chance of sending PIG to the slaughterhouses after PIG triumphed over TFFS with a final score of 22-19.

HH completely rode over their opponents to score a decided 32-9 victory over MB in the last of the Round 1 matchups. They will now face 3rd seeded ID in Round 2 and having scored the most comprehensive victory of the matchups so far will be feeling very pleased with themselves. The winner of that Round 2 matchup will move on to face OTP who brought an end to WAR’s cosmic domination aspirations with a 22-19 victory. This appears to be, by far, the most popular score of the tournament to this time and makes me wonder if they haven’t changed something in the matrix.

With some people already anticipating some high powered matchups while hoping for some major upsets the forecast is for lots of explosions on and off the board which is sure to make it even harder to operate out here so I’m going to run for cover while I still can. This is your special battlefield correspondent signing off and into an armored suit.

Hello friends, and welcome to your favourite part of the Newsletter, "War Games", where you can find information about CC Tournaments, and other stuff in the Tournament scene! We have another meaty issue this week (or for our vegetarian readers, a 'vegetably' issue), with 5 General Achievement Medals up for grabs!

In this issue, the Tournament Team is proud to celebrate our 50th "Meet the Tournament..." interview! Yes indeed, this issue's interview with benga marks the 50th player we have interviewed. As part of our 50th Interview Celebration, we have a special article with the entire archive of the 50 players interviewed thus far, as well as a trivia competition where you stand a chance to win 1 of 5 General Achievement Medals!

With this issue's Meet the Tournament Winners interview with benga, the CC Dispatch's Tournament Team has now officially interviewed a whopping 50 players for our Meet the Tournament Winners/Organisers/Directors series! That is indeed a milestone achievement for us, and I'm sure it's something that Dukasaur could never have imagined when he first started the series over 60 issues ago.

Initially starting as just a Meet the Tournament Winners series, this was later expanded to include interviews with TOs and TDs in the tournament scene, giving rise to the companion series Meet the Tournament Organisers and Meet the Tournament Directors.

During his time on the Tournament Team, Dukasaur carefully kept an archive of all the interviews, and I've since continued its upkeep since taking over as Tournament Executive. We feel it is only appropriate that we take this moment to look back on the numerous interviews the team has done, and have thus included the Interview Archive below for your viewing pleasure.

You'll find two lists ordered differently, based on your wants - a Chronological list, for those who want to feel the nostalgia and view the interviews as they were published over time; and a Alphabetical list for those that wish to look for interviews of a particular player.

In line with our celebration of 50 players interviewed, we have a trivia competition for you. Below is a trivia with 15 Questions based on the content of the interviews, the players interviewed, and some random statistics and facts about our interviews. Aren't you glad you have an Interview Archive to help you along? The first 3 responses with all the right answers, as well as 2 randomly chosen players from the subsequent pool of right answers, will each receive a General Achievement Medal. That's 5 up for grabs!

UPDATE!Founder of our "Meet the Tournament..." series and current Leader of the Media Team, Dukasaur, has kindly decided to throw in an additional prize for the contest to increase the stakes!

A randomly selected winner from the pool of players to answer all 15 Questions correctly will get to choose between an additional prize of3-Month Premium PrizeOR afree Conquer Cup VII entry.

The deadline for answers will be exactly 7 days from the date of publishing of the CC Dispatch, and are to be sent via PM to anamainiacks with the subject, 'Meet the Tournament...' Trivia. All answers are final and cannot be changed once submitted, so make sure you check through your answers before sending them in!

Good luck!

THAT’S WHAT SHE SAIDFor the following questions, identify which player gave this response.

QUESTION 1 wrote:I never really played football, not physical enough. But I've played rugby at town level for a few years, and cricket at village level for two villages.

QUESTION 2 wrote:It used to be an extremely rare event when an organizer won their own tournament, but now it happens extremely frequently because of the repetition in tournaments and organizers optimizing their tournaments to help themselves.

QUESTION 3 wrote:When I do join tourneys, I look for tourneys with a well-presented intro by the TO. It gives me confidence that the organizer takes their tourney seriously and will be diligent in running it smoothly which is a far more important factor than the maps/settings when it comes to my enjoyment of tourneys.

QUESTION 4 wrote:I like the tourney atmosphere. It has its weaknesses, no doubt, but as a community run organization, I think it works quite well.

QUESTION 5 wrote:Well I don't think there was any running around outside. I'm from Canada ya know, igloos and such?

YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?For the following questions, identify which player the interviewer was talking to / talking about.

QUESTION 6 wrote:Yeah winning a tournament cup in your third month on CC is pretty impressive. I've talked to people who waited two or three years for their first win.

QUESTION 7 wrote:Recently this player became a member of a very elite club, matched so far by only one other CC tournament player, HighlanderAttack.

QUESTION 8 wrote:The first time I ever noticed you in the tournament forums, you were having a fairly public spat with the TDs about not letting you run a large-team tournament.

QUESTION 9 wrote:One thing that really blew my mind is that they use Escalating cards.

QUESTION 10 wrote:In that case, this interview has cursed your intensity cubes for life.

EASY AS 1, 2, 3.Questions from the archives.

Question 11: Of the 50 players interviewed, how many were interviewed by Dukasaur?

Question 12: Which of our interviewers has done the least number of interviews?

Question 13: Which CC Dispatch Issue(s) had the most players interviewed?

Question 14: Which of the interviewees do/does not have a Tournament Achievement Medal?

Question 15: Which MTTO Interviewee has hosted the least number of Tournaments?

For the rest of the issue, mcshanester29 brings us yet another interview from the war front, this time from war veteran, benga (as mentioned earlier); DaveH presents his trusty Tournament Tips and the usual TPA Wrap; while anamainiacks gives us the run down on the latest TPA4 and Official Tournaments currently taking signups in Join This? Or Not!

TBH when I was starting, beating HighlanderAttack was my first mission, when I was able to beat him, only the sky was my limit and time

4. What is the most recent tournament that you won? Is it still exciting to win a tournament or after 61 tournament wins is it just part of your normal CC day?

Hunger is still there, but I don't play as much tournaments as I did.They seem all too much alike nowadays.

5. What kind of maps do you prefer in tournaments simple or complex?

Complex! Complex! Need some of those long tournaments for me, all those simple ones are there just to fill my time, but I am not eager to to play them. I remember Darin's 30th tourney, it was flat & sunny terminator but was lot of fun, getting kills on various maps, especially killing someone on Hive!! Wow none expected someone will be that crazy..fun fun fun I tell ya'

6. How many tournaments do you like to play in at one time?

Only a couple nowadays...

7. Do you play in the TPA? What do you like/dislike about it?

No.1 stayed in my memory, don't think I remember others.

Only dislike is that scoring takes too long, not sure if TPA2 all-stars even was played.

TPA all-stars is lots of fun, too bad Europe lost the first one

8. If you could change one thing in the tournament scene what would it be?

Remove any restrictions, don't think they help at all.

9. What is your favorite part about the tournaments in CC?

God how many of these Q are there!!!

I like kicking other people ass and crowning myself as King of all known things!!

10. Is there a question you wished I had asked so that you could answer it? If so what is the Q&A?

Way back in Issue 68, "Designing a 4-player tournament in which each player meets everyone else just once.", I showed how Chapcrap scheduled a 4-player tournament with 16 entrants in which everyone played each other only once. Well, after printing the following:

Which leaves us with the possibility that Chapcrap is really the mathmatical genius "mathtalk-ga" and perhaps he even knows how to uniquely schedule 5 player matches?...If anyone out there does know how to uniquely schedule 5 and more player games, please let me know!

And, guess what shortly afterwards Chapcrap sent me the information about a 5-player tournament for 25 players in which each player plays everyone else only once.

So, how can you use this information in a tournament?

Well, what is required is to have the 5 by 5 sets of players by the game number with code to invite them into the game and code to print on the game thread and code to pick out the winner/scores - perhaps the games being terminators with points for each termination?

To start with, assign the players into a list next to their number in an Excel spreadsheet. Select this two-column array and calling it, say, "Player" (In Excel 2010 this is Formulas/Define Name to bring up a New Name screen) It appears as =Sheet1!$B$5:$C$29 in the "Name Manager". If you recreate the above table in spreadsheet; select the table and call it, say, "Table", then you can lookup sets of games and players as required. This appears as "=Sheet1!$E$5:$J$29".

For instance, to get player number 22, say, the formula "=LOOKUP(Cell that has 22 in it, Player, 2, FALSE)" gets the name from column 2 of the Player array into the cell with the formula in it. In my spreadsheet I have the two arrays as shown below:[/url]

The formulae that can then be used are shown below:[/url]For Round 1 you can select the column M5 to M26 and put it in a pm to all the players. The code that appears is :

If you copy these two lines they can be pasted into all the other 4 games in round 1 and then all 5 can be pasted across the 5 rounds - Excel upgrading the code appropriately.

For getting the results; if it is say a terminator game, then see the articles I have previously written for terminator scoring.

(These "tips" started off as ones that I used to make it a bit easier in managing my own tournaments. Now, I am looking at other types of tournaments and scoring systems by all you innovative TO's out there. So, if you have a unique scoring system that you would like me to have a go at automating, please let me know and I'll be pleased to try and assist. Any queries on the above I'll be glad to respond to of course. Please note that I have just moved to Excel 2010, so there may be variations if you have other versions of Excel)

None of the remaining tournaments have finished since the last edition, although we are very close to finishes in several. I therefore believe I will have news of at least one finished tournament in the next edition.

TPA 2: Standings

TPA Season 3: State of Play

No TPA3 tournaments have finished either, but read on for some exciting news!

And now for our regular look at a selection of the tournaments in sign-ups! As you can tell, lots of CC events have been afoot of late, and with that has come a huge influx of Official Tournaments being run. Among them, we have the first two tournaments from the fourth and latest season of the Tournament Players Association (TPA), and the SOS Africa Qualifier tournaments. This issue of JTON will give you a brief look at each of these tournaments, so you can have a better idea of which you'd like to join!

Tournament Players Association - Year 4 (TPA4)If you've always wanted to get in on the TPA action in previous seasons, but felt you couldn't possibly catch up with the leaders since so much of the season had passed, well then look no further than the new season of TPA, back for the 4th year! The season has just started with the following 2 tournaments, so you'd better sign up quickly while you still can!

3, 2, 1...COUNTDOWN!! [TPA4] by elonpuckhog - Freemium Friendly! (2 game slots)To kickstart the TPA4 season, we have this simple best of three, 1v1, double elimination tournament. But perhaps it's not quite as simple as one might think. Players are assigned their home map based on their third best map rank score, hoping to add a little challenge to the tournament, and stretching players to play behind their usual favourite 1 or 2 maps. Oh, and did I mention there's a General Achievement Medal for the quaterfinalist with the highest overall winning percentage, and a 1-Year Premium Prize for any player who loses no more than 3 games during the entire tourney?

Unifying the US Senate [TPA4] by elonpuckhog - Freemium Friendly! (3 game slots)This tournament splits players into groups of 5, playing 3 games on the US Senate map and scoring points based on where they finish in the game. The top 10 scorers will move on to the next round, play another set of 3 games, and the top 5 cumulative scorers will move on to the finals. They'll play another set of 3 games, and the player with the highest total score will declared the winner.

SOS Africa - Round 2In line with Conquer Club's second official charity drive event for SOS Africa, four Qualifier tournaments will be released each week over the next four weeks, with the winner of each Qualifier being awarded with a Tournament Medal, 3-Month Premium Prize, and a place in the mega-tournament for a chance to win a further 5-Year Premium Prize. Do note, however, that you may only join ONE qualifier tournament per week, so choose wisely!

A light one on sections for Issue 103 but lots of maps in development, and Koontz1973 shines a spotlight on his very own Phantasia Altitudinis.

Ethiopia by cairnswk has received it's XML stamp and should be in BETA soon. This will be number 36 for Conquer Club's Greatest Cartographer. We can't thank you enough cairnswk, keep up the amazing work!

>>>Note a slight change in the content of these tables. Qwert only included sets where all 8 games were finished. Keefie has decided to update the tables as soon as a result is decided (so when one team wins 5 games). This results in the points being added to the tables slightly faster. Thanks to Keefie for updating the tables. <<<small correction,, i add points immediately when some clan have lead 5-0 or 5-1 or 5-2,, but not incude Games in G, because i waith that this mach become finished, so i dont know where you make this conclusion that now points will be add faster?

When some team have decision lead i add in section-P W-D-L and Points,, only G and GD are update when all games of this match are finished,, please make corrections in article.

Armandolas wrote:In platoon report, would be great to re-add a really nice report that Leehar (i think) did about the players who joined/changed clans.I allways had fun reading that.

Swifte wrote:Those were done by me thanks for the feedback, I will see what we can do about getting that up and running again

I brought this up a while ago.

Yeah, the fact is it was a cumbersome process and I didn't have time for it with taking over as Clan Exec at the time. However, I have a new idea on how to do it that takes advantage of the new Clan tab, so I'm going to give it a shot again.

The deadline for the MTT Trivia Contest has ended. Entries will no longer be accepted, and the answers, results and prizes shall be released with the next issue of the Dispatch. Thanks to all who participated!